Customer Reviews

Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity

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The contrast between 'conceptual' and 'experimental' artists, the first being the prodigy- geniuses, and the second being the slow- developers is at the heart of this work. The idea is that the first kinds of creators work in accordance with a scheme, arrive at a kind of fixed solution. They usually do their greatest work when they are young. They are sure of themselves, and receive their idea and inspiration suddenly. The second learn through experience and never come to the kind of Certainty that the first do . Galenson contrasts F.S. Scott Fitzgerald who became famous overnight at the age of twenty- six with Mark Twain who wrote 'Huckleberry Finn' over a ten year period. He contrasts T.S Eliot who wrote 'Prufrock' and 'Wasteland' with Frost who came to his best work later in life. He contrasts film- directors Orson Welles who revolutionized film with 'Citizen Kane' when Welles was in his twenties, with John Ford whose whole body of work developed slowly and is richer towards the end. The prodigy Picasso is contrasted with the late- blooming, experimenting Cezanne. The distinction does give certain insight but is also extremely problematic. It ignores in the Picasso-Cezanne case the fact that Picasso experimented all his life, created many new styles, produced some of his greatest work including 'Guernica' when he is well out of his twenties.Is Wordsworth whose great poems came in his early years , not an experimental artist in those years? Did Wordsworth stop experimenting in the years when he wrote his longest, if not his greatest work, 'The Prelude?' Where does Melville fit here, when he wrote his greatest masterpiece at the age of thirty- two, then immediately after had his ambitious failure 'Pierre' and then as his last great literary act gave us in old age, his novella masterpiece, 'Billy Budd'? Is it possible to speak of Tolstoy who wrote 'War and Peace' between the ages of thirty- five and forty simply as a 'conceptual artist' when the great adventure of his masterpiece is one in which he comprehends whole worlds of Experience in a way never done before?
It is possible to go on endlessly here bringing examples which confound the basic idea of this work? Dostoevsky was declared the great genius of Russian Literature by its foremost critic when Dostoevsky was in his twenties? But the greatest Dostoevsky masterpieces come in the very last years of his life.
I believe very simply ' creativity' is too rich and complex a subject to be pigeonholed even when the distinctions do apply in some cases, and are elegantly elaborated.
One more point. Galenson is critical of David Lehman's pioneering work on Age and Creativity in which he suggests that different kinds of creative artists do their best work in certain age- ranges, for instances lyric poets and mathematicians when very young, and philosophers towards the end of their lives. My own sense is that while there are of course countless exceptions Lehman's fundamental overall insight is a sound one.

As a creative artists who moves in slow incremental steps-searching, exploring, and experimenting-, I am much gratified to have Galenson's positive take on my plodding nature. It is the unknown that draws me forward (the experimental), not the laborious execution of a well thought-out scheme (the conceptual).
I have studied art and art history my entire life and Galenson has given me my first ever clear understanding of 'conceptual' art. I realize now that my own methods have little in common with most conceptual artists, much more in common with the 'experimental' artists of which he writes.
I find it quite refreshing and commendable that an Economics professor who comes from outside the insular field of art has delved so successfully into the minds of artists. Shouldn'd we all take more than a moment to step outside our own fields, get a fresh perspective on the world around us, and thus, on ourselves?
Kudos to professor Galenson for doing such a fine job of expanding our understanding of the creative mind, and for taking the risk to have a look from the outside.

I'm a painter, and I often have been puzzled by the reactions of other artists to my work. Some critiques seemed on point; others were hard to understand. Old Masters and Young Geniuses has shown me the core reason for these inconsistent reactions - that different people approach art from two completely different mindsets. Whether to plan a lot before starting or to just start and see how things develop? Whether to try for a big, smashing result or to move consistently over time in an incremental way towards a challenging goal? Some successful artists do it one way; other successful artists do it the other way. This book makes that distinction in style and in process clear. It is a big achievement.

I've shared Galenson's inciteful analysis with many friends; some of them artists, some of them dealers or other professionals in the field, some of them, like me, just interested in art.
Well-written, clearly organized and thought-provoking, "Old Masters and Young Geniuses" increased my understanding of the creative process and how it differs among artists. Highly recommended.

This book would be of interest to artists and collectors. Enjoy. I couldn't put it down.

This is a terrific book -- Galenson has really contributed something new and meaningful to how we think about peoples' development/expression of creativity. And by extension, how we can view our own creativity and potential.

As other reviewers have noted, the book's central premise is that creative geniuses (artistic and literary genius is the focus here) may be young or old when they do their breakthrough work. Picasso offers a textbook case of creative genius achieved in youth, while Matisse represents the other extreme: genius that takes many years to develop. Galenson argues that while traditional views of youthful genius hold for "conceptual innovators" - artists who know what they want to express and are able to just put it out there - "experimental innovators" peak much later because their genius takes much trial-and-error work to develop. But, as with Matisse, persistence can pay off in later works that are highly innovative. These are good insights, which Malcolm Gladwell builds on in his "Outliers" book and related articles (see "Late Bloomers" in the New Yorker).

Galenson is careful to use several independent data sources to assess the "importance" of paintings and poetry, including: prices paid at auction and reproductions of works in textbooks and anthologies. You may argue with how he defines the "importance" of art and poetry, but the data seem to support Galenson's premise that at least the art and literary worlds value the early work of conceptual artists more than their later work, while the reverse is true for experimental artists.

One quibble: in a few places, I felt Galenson stretches a bit in interpreting his data. For example, he observes that there are individual works by minor conceptual artists which are reproduced more often in textbooks (a measure of the artwork's "importance") than any of the works by major experimental artists like Degas and Renior. Why? Galenson's answer: conceptual artists - even a minor ones - can create breakthrough masterpieces in a way that experimentalists can not. Hmmmm......

...following Galenson's, logic, I could argue that there is something inherently special about journeyman baseball players that have hit game-winning home runs in the world series. I could also point out that world series game-winners hit by these journeymen have sometimes gotten more attention from the press and fans (and are better remembered) than a whole career's worth of home runs hit by several hall-of-fame sluggers, who never got to play in a world series. But I don't need a new theory to explain these differences. In both art and sports, it helps to be in the right place at the right time. People tend to care more about what happens in the playoffs than the regular season. And similarly, art critics tend to care more about what happens at the start of new art movements. So, like journeyman on world-series contenders, minor artists who join hot new art movements and do something noteworthy have a better chance to be recognized for it. But this kind of recognition strikes me as a very narrow way to define importance. This one small critique aside, Galenson's larger effort is a true success. It's a thoughtful academic work that delivers meaningful insights. Well done!

Dr. Galenson takes up an aspect of creativity that I have not encountered before: what accounts for the timing of an artist's success within his own developmental cycle. His explanation for the division he makes is persuasive both intellectually and on the basis of the data he presents. Having said that, his dualism arouses my distrust. I was hoping he might have more to say about an artist's development over time. Why do some artist's peak early and others ripen, apart from the nature of their innovation? Can old masters be geniuses too? Are there art forms that require mature development for success? What role does an artist's character play in the curve of his development? Perhaps I expected too much in one book. As a writer on the psychology of creativity, I am glad to have read this book.
Gregory T. Lombardo, MD, PhD.